Empath was busy sleeping in his bedroom that night when he heard someone
knocking at the door. “Empathy,” a female voice called out from behind the
door. “Empathy, please open up.”

Empath at first
thought it was Smurfette, having trouble trying to put Baby Smurf back to sleep
again, and wanting his help. But then he realized that the sound of the female
voice was different. It sounded just like his Mama Smurf’s voice, from what he
recalled from his Papa Smurf’s memories. More than that, the voice was calling
him Empathy – a name he never heard any other Smurf calling him.

The person with
that voice continued to knock and plead for Empath to open the door. Empath
wondered at this point if Jokey was playing some sort of sick joke on Empath in
the middle of the night, but he sensed somehow that the person doing the
knocking wasn’t playing any sort of joke. He decided to find out.

Putting on his Psychelian bodysuit and his hat, Empath went downstairs from his bedroom and
crossed past Polaris, again sleeping soundly, while carrying a lit candle. He
opened the door and saw a female Smurf who looked in every way just like his
Mama Smurf – exactly as how she appeared in Papa Smurf’s memories.

“This isn’t
possible,” Empath said in total disbelief, trying to dismiss what he was seeing
before him. “You have died years ago, before this smurf returned to the
village. You can’t be who you say you are!”

“But I am,
Empathy,” his Mama Smurf gently said, touching her son’s face. “I’m here and
alive, and I am not some smurfment of your imagination. You know in your heart
that what I’m smurfing is true.”

Empath reached
out and touched his Mama Smurf’s face, realizing that what he was seeing,
hearing, and feeling was very much real. The look in her eyes was like that of
how he remembered her looking at him on the day of his birth, loving and proud
of the new life she had helped brought forth.

Empath couldn’t
help feeling his eyes fill with tears at this seemingly impossible reality
happening. “Mama!” He reached out his arms to hold her just as she did hers to
hold him, sobbing with joy.

“Yes, Empathy,”
she responded joyfully. “Your Mama Smurf has come home for you.”

At the same
time, Brainy heard knocking on his own door, and the voice of someone very
familiar to him from his past pleading for him to open the door. Brainy groaned
in his bed as he grabbed his glasses and lit the candle to answer whoever was
knocking on it.

“Jokey, if this
is your idea of a joke, then I for one am smurftainly not amused,” Brainy
complained as he headed toward the door. “Especially at this time of night when
every Smurf should be…”

But as Brainy
opened the door, he saw that it wasn’t Jokey at all. It was a male Smurf who
somehow looked like his own Papa Smurf, with the same style of glasses Brainy
remembered him wearing and a goatee-styled beard. “Great Smurfness, who are
you?” he asked.

The male Smurf
at the door chuckled. “It’s been a long time since I last smurfed you
everything you needed to know, my little Brainy. I am Aristotle, your Papa
Smurf.”

This made Brainy
react in similar disbelief to how Empath reacted when he saw his Mama Smurf.

“Where’s your
Papa Smurf, Empathy?” Empath’s Mama Smurf asked, as soon as he got over the
surprise of seeing his mother for the first time in years.

“I’ll take you
to him, Mama Smurf,” Empath assured her. “But don’t you want to see your other
son, Brainy, first?”

“Brainy’s here?”
his Mama Smurf asked, surprised herself. “Please, smurf me to him and to your
Papa Smurf. This is one joyous occasion for a reunion that I don’t want to miss
a moment of.”

Empath put on
his boots and walked across the village to where Brainy’s house was. On his way
there, though, Empath saw Brainy approaching him with another Smurf who looked
like Aristotle, Brainy’s Papa Smurf.

“I never thought
I’d smurf you alive again, after all these years,” Lillithina said, embracing
Aristotle.

“Nor would I
you, Lilly,” Aristotle remarked. “You’re still as beautiful to besmurf as you
were ages ago.”

“But Mama, how
did you or Papa smurf back to life?” Brainy asked, now embracing Lillithina.

“I really don’t
know, my little Brainy,” Lillithina answered. “The last thing I smurfed was that
I was smurfing to Culliford on my death bed, and now I am here, as if whatever
smurfened to me never did.”

“I smurfed the
same way mysmurf, Lilly,” Aristotle added. “It was as if we had been smurfed
straight into our future from the instant that we died.” He took a look around
the village. “My, things have changed over the decades! I hope they still
smurf an outdoor theatre and a village archives house in this time we’re in
now.”

“We still smurf
those things, Papa,” Brainy answered. “I can smurf you what books I have written
that are now part of the archives.”

“I would love to
smurf your work, Brainy,” Aristotle said, lovingly putting his arm around his
son. “But I believe Lillithina needs to see her beloved Culliford, to let him
know that we’re alive and smurfing.”

“Well, let’s not
waste a single moment,” Empath encouraged. “This smurf will show you the way.”

Papa Smurf was
asleep in his bed when he heard knocking on his door, and a female voice calling
his name, a name he hardly ever heard for decades. “Culliford, my sweet, please
open the door.”

Papa Smurf
slowly opened his eyes, thinking that he was still dreaming. But the knocking
persisted, and so did the same voice. He had a feeling that something strange
was going on.

Putting on a red
overcoat with his nightshirt, and slipping into his fuzzy red slippers, Papa
Smurf lit a candle and made his way downstairs from his bedroom into his
laboratory to open the door. He himself was hoping that this wasn’t some sort
of trick being played on him.

He saw, when he
opened the door, Empath and Brainy standing there with two other Smurfs. “Papa
Smurf, guess who came back to the living!” Empath exclaimed.

Papa Smurf’s
eyes widened when he saw who the other two Smurfs were. “Lillithina! Aristotle!
You’re alive?!?”

“Culliford!”
Lillithina cried out as she saw her husband. “You’ve changed, but you still
smurf as handsome as ever!”

“Smurfs like the
whiteness of your whiskers smurfs you very well, my old friend,” Aristotle
mused, looking at Papa Smurf.

Papa Smurf was
still uncertain if he truly was seeing two Smurfs whom he knew had died years
ago were now alive again. “Empath, what’s smurfing on?” he asked, uncertain.
“Why are you and Brainy at my door like this in the middle of the night? Are
these ghosts we’re smurfing or what?”

“Papa Smurf,
these Smurfs feel just as real to us,” Empath answered. “Somehow this smurf
could sense that they are the very Smurfs that they claim to be, and not just
mere phantoms. The last thing they could remember was the time that they have
died, and then it was as if they were somehow transported through time to the
present.”

“Well, excuse me
if I’m skeptical, but I need to know for sure that you two Smurfs are really the
ones that I know from years ago in the Smurf Village,” Papa Smurf said,
addressing both Lillithina and Aristotle.

“Cully, I have
never been the kind of Smurf that would ever lie to you,” Lillithina said,
reaching out to her husband to embrace him despite his reluctance to accept her
presence as real.

“Let us all
smurf inside so that we can prove to you, Culliford, that we are truly the
Smurfs you remember, and that we are truly your friends,” Aristotle suggested.

Papa Smurf
nodded. Whatever had happened, he wasn’t going to stand at the door all night
and let himself, Empath, and Brainy freeze in the cold trying to figure it out.
He invited them all in.

The five of them
sat by the fire in the fireplace, with Papa Smurf, Empath, and Brainy listening
intently as Lillithina and Aristotle revealed much of their lives as they knew
to prove themselves as being real. Strangely, Papa Smurf, Empath, and Brainy
had noticed that neither of the two Smurfs were shivering while the other three
were trying to keep as warm as possible. Maybe this “time travel” changed them
so that they would not have to worry about being in extreme temperatures like
normal Smurfs would, Empath thought, though he knew naturally a Smurf’s body was
very capable of adjusting to various temperature changes.

Finally Papa
Smurf said to Lillithina and Aristotle, “That smurfs very much like it would
smurf from those two Smurfs that I knew whom you smurf after. Somehow I just
don’t believe that you truly are the Smurfs that I knew years ago.”

Lillithina
reached out and held Papa Smurf’s hand. “Culliford, I know that I’m not the
most beautiful Smurfette in the world, but you always smurfed past that and
smurfed the beauty that was in me. You’ve always smurfed that with me before,
and now I’m asking you to smurf that way again – to smurf not just with your
eyes, but also with your heart, the heart of the most handsome Smurf that I have
ever smurfed in this world, no matter how old you have become.”

Papa Smurf
looked at Lillithina, who was looking at him with the same eyes of love that he
once knew and saw years ago. She smiled at him, pleased to be with her husband
again. It just seemed too good to be true, and yet here she was, as if she were
frozen in time. He pulled her hand close to him and smelled just how beautiful
her skin was. It was slowly starting to make him feel convinced that this truly
was Lillithina, back from the dead, and young as ever.

Then suddenly
there were more knockings on the door, and a tumult of voices outside his
house. Papa Smurf got up from his seat to answer the door. The other four
Smurfs joined him to see for themselves.

It was most of
his male adult “little Smurfs” gathered together – and they also weren’t alone.
“Papa Smurf, you wouldn’t believe this! All of our Papa and Mama Smurfs have
returned!” one of the Smurfs said.

This news made
Papa Smurf collapse in shock when he saw them.

A short while
later, Papa Smurf came to again, sitting in his seat, though now surrounded by
his male adult “little Smurfs” and their parents. He recognized them as being
the very Smurfs he remembered from his younger years. There was a feeling of
excitement that filled the room as both the young adult male Smurfs and their
parents talked with each other, feeling happy about this mysterious reunion
taking place right before their eyes. He now had to get some answers.

“Please, let us
all settle down,” Papa Smurf instructed as he rose from his seat to quiet the
crowd. “Now is it true that all of you – my own fellow Smurfs – have smurfed
back from the dead in the same way that Lillithina and Aristotle have smurfed
back?”

“Aye, that is
true, my good Culliford,” Séamus, Tapper’s Papa Smurf, answered. “We all somehow
have felt like, at the moment we smurfed our last breaths, that we had in the
smurfling of an eye smurfed forward in time to where you have smurfed all of our
young little Smurflings into adulthood. The last thing I remember was that I
was smurfing little Tapper goodbye, and then here I was, alive again in the
village. My own dear wife, Molly Smurfette, smurfed that she had felt the same
thing happen to her. If anything, I’d smurf that it’s a miracle of time and
nature.”

“However it
happened, Cully, I’d smurf that we all have reason to celebrate,” Baker,
Greedy’s and Nabby’s Papa Smurf, boldly stated. “We now get to smurf all our
young ones in the lives that they have been smurfing. And I and my son Greedy
would gladly smurf together a feast of the likes which you have never smurfed
before.”

“This is all
just too amazing,” Papa Smurf commented, feeling like he was going to cry. “For
years I have dreamed that somehow I would smurf all of my fellow Smurfs
again…and now, even before I pass away, I get to smurf you all in the flesh,
just as you were when I last smurfed you, and even better than before.”

“So are we going
to celebrate our parents smurfing back to life for us, Papa Smurf?” one of his
little Smurfs asked.

“I honestly
don’t smurf why we shouldn’t,” Papa Smurf replied. “Baker, you and Greedy can
begin preparation for the celebratory feast that we’ll have tomorrow morning.
If this is how we’ll enter into the new year ahead, we’ll might as well smurf it
a big enough celebration.”